Posts tagged 802.11ac

If you have a wireless router that is more than 5 years old, you may want to start looking for a new one. I have several friends who have asked me why their brand-new computer seems to have such bad internet performance over WiFi. After some investigation, I found a range of old and outdated wir...

DisplayLink's been wringing all kinds of connectivity out of our computer's USB ports for years, turning one connection into many. It should come as no surprise, then, that the company's using its considerable compression expertise to send high-resolution 4K video through that very same pipe. Idea...

"It's not me, it's you," scolds the distant WiFi hotspot as your connection drops for the ninth time in an hour. As much as you may dream of buying a 20 meter Ethernet cable, Amped Wireless is determined to curtail that flirtation with its latest piece of 802.11ac hardware, the ACA1. The USB 3.0-p...

The BT HomeHub 4 router has barely had time to settle in, and yet already a prototype of its replacement is being callously shown off at PR events in London. It'll support the still-maturing 802.11ac standard, should you come to own any compatible devices, and is to become the default router shipp...

It's rare that people email to ask us when a certain product is launching, but plenty of you have been jonesing for Amped Wireless' new 802.11ac WiFi router. Six months after the company teased the flagship hardware at CES, the unit's finally ready to step into the spotlight. Marrying the latest W...

PCMag.com has run a review of Apple's new AirPort Extreme Base Station and they're very impressed. In keeping with Apple tradition they found the router featured the company's standard easy installation, complete with wireless setup. The base station is an upgrade from previous models that boasts...

Over the last few days we've been hearing from several of our readers about WiFi instability on new Haswell-equipped MacBook Airs, which also happen to be Apple's first computers with 802.11ac. Despite those rare reports, the company's new laptops impressed us in our recent review with solid perfo...

iFixit has a tradition of tearing apart Apple gadgets (and many others) as soon as they're on sale, and it's maintaining that custom with a fresh peek at the 2013 edition of the 13-inch MacBook Air. This isn't a repeat of last year's by-the-book affair, however -- there's a few minor surprises in...

Some of ASUS' big Computex 2013 launches today involved the latest 802.11ac WiFi flavor, and since you'll need to feed them with a router packing the same tech, ASUS has also announced one of those: the RT-AC68U. The company claims it's the first dual-band 802.11ac router with AC1900 data rates up...

Broadcom has focused most of its 802.11ac WiFi efforts this year on high- and low-end mobile chips. Today, it's swinging that attention back to bigger machinery like PCs and set-top boxes. The company's new BCM4350, BCM43556 and BCM43558 all carry more robust, 2 X 2 MIMO antennas that help them hi...

As we've mentioned before, 5G WiFi, aka 802.11ac is a good thing, unless you hate speed and range. After launching its integrated BCM4335 chip on flagship handsets like Samsung's Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One, Broadcom has announced new 5G WiFi combo chips for lower-end smartphones, PCs, notebooks an...

Although Netgear was one of the quickest out of the gates with 802.11ac WiFi hardware, that doesn't mean its hardware is the quickest today: without beamforming to optimize the signal, it risks trailing behind newcomers who've had more time to prepare. Starting with the R6300 router and A6200 USB...